the expanding u.s. prison population and mandatory minimum sentences. we'll be joined by mark mauer of the sentencing project. also kevin prineo, author of host: white house officials say they are on track to have the health care website handle 50,000 simultaneous users. with theterview financial times, i ran the's president says any nuclear pact will not involve the dismantling of iran's nuclear facilities. the interim agreement could test the two countries. for is "washington journal" november 30, 2013. our first 45 minutes, we are

talking about the entertainment in the street and american values. while he was in california, president obama told members of the industry there that they play a part in transferring culture and values and giving us a sense of what america is like for the world. we want to know if you agree or disagree with that statement. here is how you can call in this morning -- about 25 of you posting on our facebook page. some of you, especially on the twitter pages, you may remember it was all in california for several days that mr. obama spoke at the dreamworks studio, talking to members of the entertainment industry and talking about the culture and of the entertainment

industry. the headline -- again, we are kind of using that question, what he spoke about in the industry, that is the larger question about the entertainment industry. you may agree or disagree but here is how you can reach out to us this morning. feel free to tell us yes or no and feel free to tell us why. at theesident spoke dreamworks studio, here is his

expanded comments about the entertainment industry and how it reflects american culture -- [video clip] >> hundreds of millions of people may never set foot in the united states but thanks to you have experienced a small part of what makes our country special. they have learned something about our values. we have shaped a world culture through you. the stories that we tell transmit values and ideals about diversity and overcoming adversity and creativity. as a consequence of what you've done, you helped shape the world culture in a way that has made the world better. they may not know the gettysburg address, but if they are watching some old movie, maybe

"guess who is coming to dinner," or "will and grace," they have had a front-row seat to our march toward progress. young people in countries all around the world are suddenly making a connection and have an affinity to people who don't look like them. originally they may have been fearful now they say this person is like me. that is one of the powers of art. that is what you transmit. it is a remarkable legacy. there are the president's statements. here's how you can reach us --

a couple of responses on our twitter page. you can send us a comment on facebook or send us an e-mail at journal@c-span.org. our first call is steve from our independent line in massachusetts. caller: it is interesting to hear the president's talk about progress. when i hear the word "progress," it reminds me that it is a philosophically loaded term. i am 60 years old and i see the transformation in the values in this country that are no doubt media driven. you can go back to the 70s and it is just shocking to look at shows like little house on the prairie. there was more talent and trauma

,n one hour, incredible writing then you see today. television especially today seems to be run by cools. it reflects the anti-values of media moguls. we see murderers, serial killers all over the place, as if they are next door, left and right, although at the beginning of the programs they say this is fictional. at the same time you see a glorification of the cia, the fbi, and the militarization of the police. this philosophical transformation seems to be a form of social engineering. where it all began, i do not know. think the restu of the world perceives us through the media and entertainment we send out?

one of the things that is underestimated -- when we go back to 9/11 we think these people hate our way of life, they hate our freedom. i think what we are seeing is an up use of freedom. i am in a irish-american, i have nothing to do with the middle east. what they worry about is precisely these anti-values intruding where women and young degraded, where sex is sex is exalted and violence is glorified. i think that contribute to what happened. call,s is our second george for miami, florida on the democrats line. kind of agree with the gentleman who just spoke. i would not say that they do not

agree. i think they should have more of a for i.t. of different cultures we have in america, not just one side. also on the same side, i think america needs to accept its responsibility in showing the truth. we are not perfect and we have done a lot of wrong. we would be hypocrites to say we are not -- to say we are the greatest country in the world and not except our own fault. >> what you are saying is the industry should reflect the cultures. give an example. what do you think needs to be seen that is not being seen currently? the history of america the white man stealing from the indians, stealing from africa, that is in

the history. it is a fact. we should accept that as a fact and embrace it he e my father is black and my mother is white. i don't love my black father more than i love my white mother, i love them equally. people here should embrace that and step off our differences and accept the fact that we are all the same and the world should know that we accept each other and them and their culture. >> we will leave it there. industry, doesnt it portray american values? republican line, san jose, california. you are on. you are listening on the phone go ahead and stop listening to the tv. why don't we put her on hold and try chuck from florida. caller: good morning, america.

that is quite the concept and question you have here this morning. on one hand i think the media and entertainment industry groups, values of the the homosexuals, the different groups out there, which america has become nothing but a different batch of groups in my opinion. portray the stuff at nausea him until everybody does accept it, going back to the last caller. whether that is good or bad is really the question. is it an erosion of a basic set of values? media doing that deliberately? are all kinds of questions

that come out of the base question, which is a convoluted and contemplated -- and competent in question. watch a lot of entertainment, shows, movies, etc.? used to. i don't anymore. i am a c-span junkie, that is my form of entertainment. i did at one time. i watched on the family, three's company, but nowadays we have two gay men raising a boy. you notice that our society has gotten to that point only because it was presented to us through sitcom. the entertainment industry knows the powers they have. and they use it. edlund from twitter says if our american values are green --

rhea is on our democrats line. -- maria is on our democrats line. i am not happy with the way immediate or trays americans. i was not born in this country and i think in a very different way. i don't understand why -- [indiscernible] it is really not what americans stand for. i just don't understand how specific people are still in the when they have news on

tv -- i have lived in four countries, two different have never and i seen such a seen in my entire life. they believe in the very very nasty way. i don't think it is right. isouhost: our question about the entertainment industry. president obama was in california recently. jim follows up and expands on what we are talking about. "-- ons a piece from twitter -- you can add to that if you will.

give us your thoughts on the line that better presents you on this cream. if you call us in the last 30 days, hold off on doing so today. when you call and get on the line to come in, turn down your television so we do not get feedback. jeffrey from fort lauderdale, florida, republican line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i feel the entertainment industry absolutely does not portray american values in particular. to speak to the concept of american exceptionalism. i feel that concept is a myth because it suggests that america is better than other nations. the united states of america was based onborn

oppression of peoples. we committed a systematic based on native americans. then we enslaved africans. now we are struggling to consider whether gays and lesbians are entitled to write. how does the entertainment industry play into that? maybe it's not all of the american industry that a lot of the stereotypical depictions tend to portray this

godon as one nation under and so forth. do follow what i am saying? host: we will move on to terrance in maryland. do i think gimmick -- do i think the entertainment industry countries american values? history andmerican even the depictions in the early century, werly 19th have always had a violent culture. when you get up to this time you see the different sexualization's of the causes -- of the people you see on reality tv.

as long as we participate in the -- the sad part is the people who make the decisions, the executives, they have control over what you see and what your children see. they knowingly put the stuff on -- they put the stuff on tv and they know that pop culture, if that is what you want to call it, they know people observe all the stuff and this becomes their reality. so the concerns you have, how does that consume -- how does that affect the way you consume media? i like to look for the alternative sources. american i i am an have earthly values. we won't mess because our values

are going to be different. if i portray myself as earthly first and the u.s. government or any other entity, then i can deal with you as an earthling. these are really matters that are spurred. this is then a saying that field of dreams the movie does reflect our value. from facebook this morning, a couple of comments. you can add your conversation on facebook.

charles is next on delaware. hello. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] caller: thank you for taking my call. america being portray does not do us any service overs -- overseas. i would talk to people about what americans were. it wasn't just the movies but it is how the news per trade americans. he see miley cyrus, you see baldwin, you see actors getting away with doing drugs and drunk theing and all this read

way we are portrayed in the movie tv industry and even print is just not the way most americans are. that is the way many people outside of our country see us and have for the past 50 years or so. i think one previous caller said something about old movies. songs and youold hear things that are just so different. how much is that dog in the window, compared to the stuff you hear from the rappers and what is supposedly current america. stories, thef news numbers are on the screen. a couple of stories to point you to. "the new york times this morning. it was supposed to accommodate 50,000 simultaneous users. the new york times saying --

adding fat, the administration has spent over $9 million beefing up the system with additional servers and other hardware.

from the washington post this morning on the status of healthcare.gov, the start on the first page and continues inside come a saying -- our next call is been joining us from atlanta georgia. caller: i listened to all the callers and all their points are valid. that theme to believe entertainment industry is a micheline and it means many things to many people.

it is a role and shape in american values. .e begin to see a difference it drastically changed with the and showing just the opposite type of family values. of thisget out conversation is even though it is a machine, it is an industry ,nd has structure, organization so there is somebody or something or some group that is directing it. maybe it is the organizations that run hollywood. it definitely has structure. somebody is determining the type i think that is

something we should consider. it scares me. how does that affect your entertainment consumption? my entertainment is in technology and i do not watch tv that much unless it is a show where i am learning something, like maybe a nature show or how the earth is formed. pop stars is a reality show but you learn. most of the shows, you are just consuming types of morals that are really degrading. it scares me where this is actually heading in when you watch the local news, wherever get a lot of you

news stories about people getting shot and all of the naked of things. that, when ilot of -- it is peaceful. is a diametrically opposed picture. the parents watchdog council put out some statistics. taking a look specifically at that twon, saying thirds of children in the united states have television sets in their bedroom. children spend more time watching television than they do in school. television reaches children at a younger age. it goes to statistics about the internet, saying 31% of children

surveyed report having seen a pornographic site on the internet. 18 of teens ages three to frequently communicates online was someone they have never met in person and 37% have received a link to ask -- and link to sexually explicit content. familiestely 40% of with preschoolers own videogame government. and 90% play peter that play computer and other games. this is from the pew research center. american entertainment industry and if it reflects american values, that is the question we want to take on today. you can look online. there is a story in the los angeles times. we are talking to give you a sense of where we are going. we will talk about what the president said, especially when

it comes the entertainment industry. there is the website. doug is from virginia, good morning. caller: how are you doing? span.lly enjoy c- is entertainment, that is what it is, it is fantasy for the most part. shows they show and discuss reality. i get a kick out of listening to you guys in the morning and andening to people call-in seeing just how far-fetched people really are. host: what you think about the idea that television or any other media delivers values? i don't think it is

about values. it is about what catches your attention and what holds your attention. the police would never get by with shooting as many people as they should on television. or i would hope they don't. i live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. we don't have that problem here. host: john is next on the republican line from california. caller: thank you for c-span. i wanted to say to america that i do think in a form american entertainment has bigger dated family values. bigger dated a family values. i think it continues to gun violence and contributes to what our enemies would call us as

"the great satan. we have some immoral type programming the people are allowed to view. altogether wehat have become a nation that is financially bankrupt and morally ankara. i want us to really rethink. independents,o democrats, and republicans. i really discourage you from democrats, republicans, and independents. why don't you put us into one

group of americans and try to find out what is it that our american value -- our american family values? next caller, hello. hello. i wanted to make a comment in relation to the president's comments, especially with the popularity of the television drama scandal, i believe his comments were largely positive. it was positive what he was saying in the entertainment industry. i would love to hear my fellow point of view on how that particular program portrays the presidency. of corruption.

i'll would be interested to hear his comments on that. do you watch the program? caller: i do, i enjoy it. why do you make the connection? his comments were specifically regarding how it person may never have set foot in the united states yet they can know quite a bit about our values from the entertainment industry. i don't think that would be a very positive the picture of our government and the way things currently work. host: let's read a couple of tweets --

you can make comments off of twitter, facebook, and on the phones. here is becky from clearwater, florida on the democrats line. caller: hello. i did not get a chance to look , but i worked at nelson. be viewing it as a value and delivery system. think when we quote all these watchdog groups on our job programs, it is their to get people to stop consuming entertainment. were you in charge of gathering ratings and nielsen?

-- host: were you in charge of gathering ratings at nielsen? caller: yes. expand on communicating values. caller: unfortunately people consume more entertainment than they should, that is my opinion. they are getting their values from entertainment and not from -- unfortunately everybody has a stable home life. they might beginning their values from entertainment, which is not a good thing. this is why we should be putting our money into things like big brother and big sister and stuff like that. unfortunately there is more money in entertainment than some of these programs. would call people working and nielsen, what kind of things did you want to figure out from them? you basically just find

that demographic and ages and stuff like that. you just find out what they're watching. a make you fill out a booklet. i'm sure that many of your viewers have been called and have actually participated. are you impressed by the amount of television we consume as a culture? caller: yes. people have such different opinions and such different age groups. i forget what they would always say. but it was westerns. my parents won't let me watch -- there are certain ones where you are supposed -- --posed to talk to a certain

i have a pretty strong opinion about it. the parents should be determining what their kids are watching. host: has it affected how much you watch television? caller: i don't watch as much. we appreciate the perspective. republican line is next. caller: good morning. slope to theppery way hollywood does things.

i like how the catchphrase "the new normal oh -- "the new normal" it is my ear. i use the channel slippery whole lot. -- channel flipper a whole lot. i have a satellite dish and i use only eight or 10 channels. if you go to the financial times today, there is an interview that has been done with iran's president. it talks about a lot of things but particularly this agreement that iran and other countries have. to give you a little sense of the interview, here's the writeup.

pennsylvania, independent line, hello. i believe the industry does not portray morals, not my morals, anyway. i don't watch that much tv. what it really comes down to is that parents -- it's these it up to them -- it is up to them to be active in their children's lives. people have problems between .eality and fantasy host: i assume you have children. i'm you have different perceptions of what television cells or what it communicates to them? growing up in the age bracket i did, you did not have so much sex and violence on tv. the games they have out for kids, very impressionable.

they are really impressionable. it comes back to the parents. host: a correlation game,. troy is up next. caller: good morning. question should be our values as american. watching -- my mom would not let me watch all in the family. that was on prime time, which came on at 9:00. now you have people using profane words at 6:00 in the morning.

i think we have just gone downhill. the wall street journal has the latest on this. china raises stakes and air standoff. spokesman -- china grab some of the most advanced fighter jets. on friday --

here is "the wall street journal" headline. this is merry for mississippi, thank you for waiting. i believe the hollywood celebrities need to remember where they came from. just because they are meantaining us does not that they absolutely know anything about politics or that they are smart. anything lci co -- anything else? caller: my favorite shows are like the old shows that we used to watch that center around family. television and all of the electronics, like smart and everything like that, is responsible for the breakdown of the family and friends and socialization.

it is sad what is happening to america. entertainment is controlling our politics. and that is a sad thing. it is a joke. responsible for a lot of the votes and who gets voted. ofhink they should put a lot thought into that. host: when you want to watch shows that you give examples of, how do you find that on television the? caller: you have to constantly go through all the channels. most of the time there is nothing fitting to watch on tv. another thing is we are paying for these products and it is a big joke when you think about it.

we are having to pay a monthly payment. we are turning into a bunch of fools. it is really sad. tv is mostly responsible for it. independent line, illinois. it amazing that every channel obama has, he runs out to his liberal friends in hollywood. there is no value to it. there's a bunch of trash coming out of hollywood. destructing, really -- really disgusting stuff. think. for c-span, history channel, discovery, things you learn something from. the rest of it is garbage.

it is sad the young people are exposed this kind of junk. host: this is kevin on the democrats line. i would say setting aside the reality shows and talk , i think hollywood does reflect our values. can you give an example? caller: i watch a lot of hbo. ande is so much reality tv the production values are going down. the stations can broadcast the stuff for so cheap that they don't want to put high-quality shows up. they're really trying to dumb down the american public. it is ridiculous.

thank god for c-span. on the news shows they have been talking about these tax loopholes but they never list individual once to inform the public. is the loophole that companies can write off if they pay their ceos a certain amount of salary and the rest is in stock options, 10 million in stock options. that is a 100% right off for that company. we finish off this segment and continue on our program, our first guest will talk about efforts in congress, taking on the larger issue of changing the tax code. outof the legislators put specific ideas when dealing with corporate taxes. you'll talk about what is being done on the corporate that on the personal front. later on in the program, there

it federall print -- prison sentencing guideline. later on ine bit this program, talking about that topic. i want to let you know about our newspaper -- are newsmakers program. ben nelson is now the ceo of the national association of insurance commissions. during the interview, he talks about the states decision and -- her it onthis information we have whether or not states are going to go along with the president's -- int or his suggestion think 17 states have decided to do this.

18 states have decided not to go along with that recommendation and have chosen to go in other way. a third, a third, a third. i'me that haven't decided still looking to do what they can under their law. it isn't surprising there are different approaches when you have a state-based system. is, aboutoncern having the policies extended into the next year, some people will decide to do that, some people will choose not to. there is always a concern that people with health conditions are the ones who will want to extend the coverage and others will choose to opt for other coverage elsewhere. -- and we are is just finding out -- now there will be two different pools of individuals.

the pool those that are having their coverage extended and the other pool, which is larger, of people who will be buying policies and going into the affordable care act as a result. this is a challenge because actuarial,aw approaches are based on the law of large numbers. pool so want is a large you do not end up with people who simply have health conditions, or that will skew the rates and make them much higher. journal"ngton continues. our first guest is a resident scholar at the american enterprise institute. we are talking about the tax code and our efforts to change it. in "the washington post" this senator max baucus

and representative dave camp. says both are trying to make changes. who are these guys and what are they doing? oft: they are the chairman the two tax-writing committees in congress. all the tax bills originate in the ways and means committee before it moves through the house of representatives. were taxhe committee bills go through in the senate before they reach the senate floor. legislatures -- legislators are interested in trying to change the corporate tax system and eventually the individual tax system. >> what are they promoting? is it a specific idea he e what are they trying to do? baucus came out with some specific proposal this week. languagelegislative

that can pass congress what he wants to do with the corporate income tax. congressman camp has put out some partial proposals. some similare ideas and yet they are approaching this from different perspectives. they both want to bring the corporate tax rate down from the 35% it is at now. they both want to rod and the corporate tax they scum a which is often described as closing tasks loopholes. a lot of that comes down to slowing down the depreciation schedule. legislaturesthese wants to change how we attack the overseas earnings of the company's. they actually have it friend ideas about how they wanted to change in that area. host: as far senator baucus is concerned, why start on the corporate side? guest: it is viewed as the

easier of the two between the corporate and individual. neither of these things are easy to undertake. all is a consensus that the rate needs to come down. the united states has a higher corporate tax rate than any country in the developed world. it is roughly third-highest in the entire world. that is a trend that has emerged in the last few decades. there is consensus on that starting point. and there is a consensus in trying to get rid of corporate tax preferences. it is less explosive than the individual side. if you talk about changing the individual tax code, you are talking about changing the deduction, first changing the state and local tax eduction, nothing quite as politically explosive as that. it is a natural place to start.

>> some of the highlights from the language that came out this week. it says -- what is important as far as specifics he e what are -- as far -- as far as specifics he e --as far as specifics? today we don't tax most of that in, when the income is actually generated or earned overseas. instead we wait until that income is brought back to the united states, usually in the form of a dividend payment. and onlyomes back, then, do we slap on a u.s. tax.

we get a credit for foreign income taxes we are paid. do is,e proposal would there would be no tax on the money comes back. imposed when the income is earned overseas. for many of the income, it would be taxed at a rate lower than the rate that applies to income here in the united states. be ared to today, it would heavier tax burden overseas because it will be paid upfront, right away, when the income is earned. come buddies no longer have the ability to delay the tax by keep in the money parked overseas. makes sense that whatever text you want to impose -- it should not matter when the money comes back. there is no reason you should have an artificial penalty on bring the money back. concernhe grounds for is whether the tax you want to impose on the income earned is too high. i think there are some problems there.

by saying whatever tax it is is we want to do, we're going to put on. lower than a 35% threshold? caller: he wants to get it down below 30. let's say 20. he is going to do that by slowing down the depreciation deductions. that will bring the rate down. under one of the two options he the he would say let's tax earnings at 80% of the rate that applies. if he gets the domestic rate down to 20%, and the foreign earnings would have a 22% foreign earnings rating. if the foreign country taxes less than 22.4%, u.s. taxes make up the difference. that a seniorter

democrat is making this kind proposal, especially to the corporate world? > guest: most of them are not crazy about the particular proposal he's putting forward. most would like a rate lower. host: such as? guest: most would prefer a rate close to zero. somewhere in the vicinity of zero. tax these overseas earnings? it just creates an incentive to drive jobs overseas. income can be earned overseas through a u.s. charter company or a foreign charter company. the only difference is where you get the piece of paper from.

if one government gave you this piece of paper. if you have a foreign company that has money overseas, there is no tax at all. what about jurisdiction? it is a foreign corporation operating abroad. try to impose high taxes on u.s. charter companies when they operate abroad, people will think that will discourage them from operating abroad. i don't think that is the long- run response you're going to get. the investments overseas are still going to happen. they're going to be done for foreign charter companies. a residentuest is scholar talk about efforts on changing the tax code. if you want to ask him questions, here is your chance to do so.

you can make your thoughts known on twitter -- on twitter and you can also send us an e-mail. efforts, how do they compare the white house philosophy of corporate taxes? host guest: president obama wants to bring down the corporate rate and broaden the base. it has been similar to what the president has been talking about. he put out a framework document in february 2012 that layouts mikey is about corporate tax reform. i think it was a correct candid labeling. wasn't a full-fledged clan but it some general concepts. they are very similar to what senator baucus is proposing. center campus would pose a much lower rate.

you have the baucus plan and administration framework on the other. host: could we see an agreement between the two? guest: i don't expect to see anything past and 2014. at some point you can imagine them coming together. we have a rate of 22%. conversely campus is talking about a rate of one percent. there is obviously a range between 21 and 22 we can imagine them agreeing on a number. i still think at this point there is a number they could agree on. could, there are a couple of obstacles that would have to be addressed before you really could make a corporate tax reform work. we can discuss those if you want. is how you treat businesses that are not corporations.

there are a lot of businesses that are set up as partnerships or limited liability companies or just so proprietorships one by one person. there are also small corporations that are not taxed the same. here's the problem. under the baucus plan and camp plan, all of these plants would take away corporate tax preferences, slow down depreciation, and things like that. that would raise taxes. the corporations would be compensated by getting a lower corporate tax rate. if you slow down and make those other changes, those have to apply as a practical matter. the partnerships and llc, they get a depreciation schedule as well. their taxes would go up. how do you compensate them? lowering the corporate tax rate does not help them. then you think, what are the options? carve out ay to

special lower individual tax rate for those businesses, keep the regular individual rates the lowerut give rate. that creates all kinds of problems. from here is michael longmont, colorado. independent line. you are on with alan viard. hi, thanks to c-span. it seems like the 35% rate is , afterng on paper subsidies, write off everything. it is one of the lowest in the world. you are talking about s corporations, and it seems like an s corporation will end up paying way more taxes, they will just lower the tax rate of larger companies. i guess i do not understand why we are paying personal income on

s corporations. it seems that a normal person should pay personal income, but onwant, like, 0% corporations. guest: the zero tax rate would be for the overseas earnings of u.s. charter companies. again, we already have a zero of rate on overseas earnings four and chartered companies, so trying to have a substantial tax rate on the overseas earnings based on the fact that the company have a piece of paper from the u.s. and front -- instead from a foreign country, that is not going to be something that is very viable in the long run. i think the governments around the world of early recognized that. it is not matter whether they are right wing, left-wing, socialist governments, nearly every country has worked toward a system where they do not try to tax the business income that their companies on outside the country's borders. so really governments around the world have a figure that out.

regardless of what their ideology is. also the mention question about what the effective tax rate is. is notective tax rate one of the lowest in the world. it is probably above average, but it is not the highest the witty official tax rate is. the average effective tax rate here on income in the u.s. is around 25%. pension -- some countries playing more, close to the official rate, others paying less. we try to even that out a bit and try to bring everybody to a more similar rate and have a rate on paper that is closer to a rate the companies are paying directly. orps are what we were just talking about, if you do make the changes that senator or presidentp obama were talking about, then you do raise taxes on the llc's,

on the partnerships, on the sole proprietorships, and that is a real challenge that any of these reforms lance going to have to deal with. plans are going to have to deal with. ofiously there is a lot appeal to try to revamp the tax code, but then you just made the problem a lot more challenging. you bring in all that's political explosive stuff from the individual side. host: from twitter -- if we removed corporation taxes, when it our products sell better overseas without the tax, and when it corporate headquarters flock here as tax haven? guest: the u.s. benefits would become a tax haven if we lowered our corporate tax rate to zero or anything close to appeared we have to distinguish again there are two reforms. one was just to say we would have a zero rate on the overseas earnings, and that would really just put us and the line with what the rest of the world is doing.

the other thing is to dominate the corporate tax rate altogether. if you look 15 years ahead, that is probably what is going to happen not just in the u.s. but other countries as well. he will say how do you do that because obviously there is income earned by corporations. if you have an income tax system, you have to tax that income, especially since it goes to those who are well off and have the ability to pay. all that income goes to stockholders, so stockholders can pay tax. what we will end up doing in the long run is saying we are not going to have a tax that the corporation level, but we're going to tax be stockholders in full on the income they get. we are going to tax their dividend, their regular rate, gains.apital we will have to tax the capital gains each year as they accrue, at the price of the stock goes up, even if they have not pulled the stock, even if it not turned again into cash. that is a big change from what we do today. i would make a lot more sense than trying to keep the corporate income tax

because corporate income taxes flaw the multiple ways. it is really arbitrary distortions and distinctions that are not make sense. why are we taxing corporations differ from businesses that are not set up as corporations? that are set up as a partnership or an llc? why are we allowing corporations to deduct the interest they pay on death but not the dividends they pay on stocks? ont is a much heavier tax investments that are financed by issuing stock instead of that issue bonds. i want to tax stop by to not want to tax the bond pared whatever goal you have in mind for the corporate income tax, the rich pay their fair share or something, it is not a cobbler said to have this arbitrary distinction between stocks and bonds. -- it does not accomplish that do have this arbitrary decision between stocks and bonds. measure which country the

income is actually earned in, and we have seen the complexity of trying to tax all different transactions that corporations engage in -- mergers and spinoffs and such not. ofhink there is some kind historical path that has led us to this point, but it is inconceivable that if you are starting a value system from scratch, it would not look remotely like this. body fore is massachusetts, democrats line. you are on. go ahead. caller: ok. i wanted to know why taxes seem to increase when people marry, and also why can't we just have a flat tax where everybody just pays the same amount of tax on whatever? making the of this code is so difficult for common people to understand and making it easy for people who are smart to get out of their taxes. on the marriage question,

when two people get married, it is possible for their taxes to either go up or to go down. actually come under the tax rules that we have had since 2001, and is actually more likely that the tax bill will go down for the couple when a married man for it to go up. depending on the circumstances, it could change in either direction. a two income couple is likely to pay more as a married couple been as singles, but if you have a one earner couple, then the tax rates would be less. it is archery either way, why should taxes go up or down? question, the other not having a flat tax because we do have tax records. if you tax the married couple as -- as a single unit and you have a tax schedule for them, would have to people earning income, that is when to put them into a higher tax bracket, and that is where the

marriage penalty, as people call it, comes from. we try to offer some relief from that, but then that actually creates a marriage bonus for couples where one person is earning most of the income. don't we have a flat tax e i think the main reason is because first of all just making the rate schedule flat does not give you that much simplicity. if you think about why the tax system is so complicated, why 1040 is so formidable when we deal with it, it is really not because of the rate schedule. most people do not confront it at all. you really just look up the tax right ability and tables. all of the complexity comes from what income do you include, which do you exclude, what deductions could you take, what tax credits are certain kinds of income measured? so does having the rate schedule become flat would not really change any of that stuff. instead, you have to really change the rules about what kind

of things are taxable and what kind of deductions and credits you get. that again gets you into that stuff. robert, arlington heights, illinois, independent line. caller: yes, sir. i really enjoy the program. my main prop -- my main comment would be this. ridiculous that companies are able to manipulate the tax policy in order to save more money overseas and here. are all the oil companies. they're making a lot of money. they have been since bush, obama, it is not really matter. a free loant from the government. chinese $17 trillion. the banks were taken care of really good up by obama and

bush, the republicans and democrats, to provide that trillion dollars to make sure everybody is taking care of. and the working class pay taxes here. guest: the big oil companies do not get a ridiculously favorable tax payment. we do have a number of tax breaks for oil and gas but most of them are restricted to or and available in full to the independent producers. so little oil is who is paying low taxes rather than big oil. but there is a more general point which is that our current tax system is riddled with special provisions, a lot of them are for her noble energy in various forms, but there are all kinds of rates for various different industries. one thing that any good tax reform would do is try to get rid of some of those. i think the baucus plan does that in many cases. i think the cap plan is going to do that. will asident's plan

well. getting rid of the so-called special interest loopholes is like really good policy, but they are actually not nearly as big as people think they are. so it actually does not bring in as much money as you might hope, it is not really let you bring on the 35% corporate rate as much as you want or raise as much money as you want for deficit eduction or as 24 new spending or whatever it is your to do with that money. there.s just not as much you do want to get rid of the industry-specific things. host: taxpayers for common sense wrote him op-ed about tax reform efforts. he said in part one common debate about tax reform is guest: absolutely.

that is exactly right. host: give examples. guest: the renewable energy tax raiser one example. you could have one people whether they may or may not want to tackle those. we had a provision that was adopted in 2004, which is sometimes called the manufacturing deduction. it applies to any industry that produces goods instead of services, and so you have the most unbelievable distinctions there about whether serving coffee, whether that is a service, and roasting coffee beans that is like producing goods, and regulations to distinguish what gets this and what does not. areou get the break, you effectively being taxed at 32%, but if you do not, you are paying a 35% rate. so those kinds of things he certainly could go through and address some of those. host: our guest currently serves as a senior economist from the federal reserve bank of dallas from 1990 82 2006. was the senior economist for the

president's council of economic advisers from 2002 until 2004. how does it differ under this administration and under this current -- under president bush's amateurish and? --st: he did one thing in president bush's administration? isst: he did one thing -- it wrong to do it twice, we have the stockholders paying dividends and capital gains as well. we wanted to try to alleviate this double tax burden. was totake they made decide to reduce the burden on the stockholders. and leave the burden at the corporate level unchanged. and that is the wrong priority, dead wrong. the exact opposite of what we should do. we should lower the board and of the or print level and increase lower the at the --

burden of the corporate level and increase the burden that the stock level. we should tax all the income in full at the stockholder level. if i am based -- host: if i am a stockholder, i will be looking at that differently. guest: you might be, but you should not be. it is attached to being skimmed off the top before the money comes to you. if anything, you should what the tax burden to be more visible. the problem with taxing at the corporate level is that you tax corporations when they invest here, and that drives investment out of the u.s. then if you try to fix that by saying i will tax the overseas investment of u.s.-chartered companies, then they just get foreign charters. if you tax american stockholders on where they get that money, you don't have to worry about where the income is earned, where the charter is, here is un-american that has the ability to pay, he is getting income, and he is going to pay tax on the income. host: you are now waiting for its return into cash. guest: right.

i think you would eventually have to do that to make the system really works, but at least the large stockholders would have to date on the income as a cruise each year when the stock goes up. host: jones, ohio, democrat line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have been very anxious to ask a conservative scholar as yourself what your response 'suld be to the pope remarks recently reverting all these maneuvers, not helping the middle class at all raise their standards for the last 30 or so years. i will take my answer off the air. thank you. i think the -- every economic system has to confront a trade-off between efficiency and equity. we all want the pie to be as big as possible, but we also wanted to be fairly allocated. we do not want people to be starving, we do not want people to be destitute, we want to safetythere is a minimum

net available for everyone, we want all sectors of society to advance over time. so there is a always a struggle to find trade-off. make taxes, how progressive do we make the taxes some? i do not think anybody, economist or not economist or any other public figure, has some kind of magical right answer to how that trade-off should be resolved. there is an economic cost trying to redistribute income. when you try to slice the pie more evenly, there is usually a tendency to make the pie somewhat smaller. that is not and you should not do it, it just means you have to look at the trade-offs. the u.s. has a quite progressive tax system but it is also low compared to other countries. it is an interesting choice. we do not redistribute as much income as the european governments do, even though our thai system is more progressive, because they are -- our tax

system is more progressive, just because it is smaller. it will be interesting to see how it evolves in the upcoming decades. a cut of the rising health-care costs, because of the retirement age, because of the rights and life expectancy, we are already looking at a future in which our government is going to get bigger, in which government spending is going to be rising, and which are bigger share of our economy is going to be devoted to paying health care and retirement benefits and making those transfer payments. thinkhink we need to carefully about whether we want to increase those further. host: john from twitter says -- some corporations get act more money than they pay in. that is not really fair now, is it? is one of thethat problems. the uneven distribution of the tax burden. fors actually quite rare companies to skates taxes altogether, but there is -- again, the average effective rate 25% on domestic income, but you have some companies paying more than that, some host: 88

less. host:we get people -- some of paying less. int: we get people calling saying apple does not pay tax. is that true or not? andt: on foreign earnings, some do not pay taxes. i do not know how you could change that. you could try to make it more rational. as long as we do not pass the overseas earnings of a foreign- chartered company, how much can we realistically get by taxing overseas earnings of a u.s.- chartered company? host: if a company is paying overseas, did they have to pay any taxes to the country that they are located in? guest: yes. a few countries are tax havens where they do not impose taxes on companies operating there, but the overwhelming pattern is that yes, a u.s. company operated overseas will pay taxes there just as a foreign company operating here will pay a u.s. taxpayer we do give a credit to a u.s. company for the foreign taxes that they have paid on their income. host: michael from florida,

republican line. caller: thank you for taking my call. he is a numbers guy and i have to agree with them, but maybe the nation should be taxed philosophically. people tend to refer to corporations mainly bigger corporations or the corporations , they think of them as monoliths like there some child's toy building that springs arms and legs and have minds of their own spirited but really corporations are just large collections, a large , and it is successful, producing the fine products at a final price, competitive society and consumers are buying it. so the idea of taxing it as a punishment, saying that they are making to my 20th a wrong way to go about it. if we do get the message -- making too much money is the wrong way to about it. we get the message that it is like a spigot connecting a

reservoir, if we tap into that spigot, the water -- less water gets to the field. corporations do let the money to employees, new products, new services. i had an economics teacher who said you -- if you could shrink yourself down to the molecular size and ride on the back of a dollar as it passes from a consumer to a corporation, you find yourself very and that frequently in the hands of a middle-class person again. guest: yes, there is a common view that a corporation is a distinct entity that is not owned by or benefiting any people, so when you tax the corporation, then somehow that is free money. of course that is not right. a conduit ison is what many economists say that is channeling the activities of people. so when you tax a corporation, your taxing people. does that mean you should not pack the corporation?

maybe, maybe not. of course all taxes fall on people. what you want to do is to have the burden on people who do things through corporations to be fairly imposed in relationship to the tax on people who do things in other ways. so i think one ideal way to do that again would be to say let's actually not put in tax on the such,ation at son's -- as but let's tax the income to the stockholders and fully to your because it is the stockholders who are the people who are really getting that income. . off of e-mail says: america provided tax-free environment if those businesses pay much higher wages? when a that help our government by simulating cuts -- consumer purchases and result in more taxes for government? 1 determines wages in the long run and that is the productivity of labor. you could have a various things that can push wages off a little but above that, you could have things that push wages below

that point, but it can never vary much from what the productivity was of those workers. the only way to keep wage growth going is to have productive the rise of her time. lots of things i into that. make sure the workers are agitated, making sure there is cap finance, factories -- making sure that workers are educated, making sure there is capital on hand, factories, infrastructure, having a stable society governed by laws were people can actually produce and go about their lives. all of those things matter for making workers productive and keeping their wages up. you cannot just wave -- raise wages by decree. host: jim is from washington state and he is on our independent line. caller: hi. r taking me. he's doing a great job explaining a lot of it. oversease things that

businesses have not really explained it's a lot of it is run through licensing were company will have a product, say logo,, theyicensing say of license to a company overseas, then they go around and say well, we charge this much for the licenses, we are keeping a money overseas. anst: a licenses just example of an intangible asset. the biggest challenge a faces is where it is being heard. the baucus plan as proposals to try to tighten up the rules on where the income is attributed, and the camp proposal have some options to do that as well.

it is also in the president's framework. it is a common strategy to try to really pin down more precisely where that income is truly earned so that is not arbitrarily shifted into a jurisdiction. as long as we're dealing with the current tax system, you do have to try to do that, but i think it is a very challenging endeavor. we are never going to be fully successful at doing that. again, if you decide at some point to stop trying to do the tax at the corporate level is just tax the stockholders, every year on the full income that they get, then you automatically are able to sidestep that problem because every american stockholder will be paying tax on all of the income from their holdings regardless of where that income is earned. gameplaying to move intangible assets around is no longer going to do anything. that income is going to be taxed through the stockholder regardless. host: we talk about mr. baucus, i want to give mr. kamp is due.

he is pressing forward on tax reform. despite resistance from gop leaders. why is he getting that resistant ? .uest: that is interesting political parties are driven by political considerations that we may not prefer to see them governed by. the republican leadership did tell congressman camp to go a bit slower on his proposal, to not really marketing thing up in his committee, getting a bill together until early 2014. he had been thinking of doing it this year. host: for more on the personal side -- guest: personal and corporate, really. the reason is that they want the american people's attention to be focused as much as possible on the issues with health care reform, the problems with the website, the issues with policies being canceled. the republican party feel that those are political winners for them. they do not want to distract people's attention from that by putting forward some tax

proposal, which to be realistic is unlikely to move forward anyway in the near future. so their perspective is that he should hold off. so it is a political maneuver, but that is what political parties do. host: how would it affect consumers day in and day out if these were to be made? less detailed thinking about that in congress. there has been a lot of thinking by the tax policy community, but they give very explosive very quickly because people say well, we ought to get rid of the loopholes and bring the rates down. then when you look at the " loopholes," where the money really is that, these are not the things most people think of as loopholes. these collusion from employer- provided health insurance, the state and local tax deductions, those are not loopholes in the sense of being some unintended tax break that some clever person managed to engineer against the wishes of congress.

those were tax preferences that congress deliberately adopted. in my opinion, it would make good public policy sense to curtail a lot of those tax practices. not eliminate those cases, but curtail them, target them on the people who need them, and that would make perfect sense. but that is really a different thing than saying oh, let's go close loopholes, some obscure loopholes that nobody really uses or cares about. point, he to make the often talked about the mortgage reduction, -- the mortgage deduction. is more than $100 billion just from the individual income tax not being collected on it, and then when you consider the social security and medicare payroll taxes are also not connected -- collected on employer-provided health insurance. that is another big pot of money as well. so, yes, when you talk about

where is the money really going to that you could actually change things in order to be able to bring the rates down, you are talking about the provisions that people really use. it almost has to be, right? if there is going to be big money therefore changing it, by definition it has to be a big provision that millions of people are using. if nobody without they're really using it, if it was only a couple of people, it would not be enough money to really compass anything on the right side. host: one more call for our guest. pixie from washington say, democrats lied heard caller: -- line. you are on, go ahead. caller: 20 years ago, i worked for a japanese plant that move there, and they said for the first five years, they did not have to pay taxes. yet they boasted that the first like, $5 billion on their product.

come -- if they're going to set up shop there, why can't they pay taxes, too ? guest: foreign company that operated in the u.s. to pay taxes here. i do not know what special arrangement that company might have had 30 said it was a long time ago. it could conceivably be a provision from a bilateral treaty that the u.s. has with japan on tax matters. i am not aware of any tax break like that being given today. if one company today operating in the u.s. is subject to same rules of the u.s. chartered company that operates here. haveif it actually does revenue from the foreign- chartered companies that are operating in the u.s. host: is there something we can learn about tax reform any house over a budget, the deadline due sometime in mid- december? guest: this tax effort is going to stretch beyond a doubt --

that budget deadline. if they reach an agreement, it will be a small agreement. they will agree on some levels for annually appropriated spending, and they will leave the tax system and the entitlement program basically unchanged because there is not the time or the well oriental -- will or the inclination to tackle that have a step in the next two weeks. deadline, you know, i think there is a reasonable chance that they would reach an agreement, maybe not by mid-december, but by mid- january when another shutdown potentially happens. nobody wants it should appear it will be a small agreement that is not really touch any of those big issues. with americanrd enterprise institute talking about tax reform. thank you for your time. guest: thank you. host: coming up on our program, the crowding of state and prison mauer of the sentencing project will join us with that. and the influence of a bramley concurred one thing to consider

how america grew as a world power under his presidency. you will learn more when author kevin peraino joined us later in the program as "washington journal" continues after this. ♪ >> on many campuses, young women are taught that they live in a patriarchal society where girls are shortchanged in the school, robert their self-esteem and adolescents, and then channeled into low-paying fields. once in the workplace, they are cheated out of 25% of their salaries, they face invisible barriers and all sorts of forces that hold them down to keep them back, keep them out of the high

echelons of power. now, this picture just does not fit reality. it is distorted. the claims that supported happened repeatedly time they have taken on this or of truth. >> her critics of late 20th century feminism and feminist amended to bury culture have led critics to label her as anti- feminist. sunday on "in-depth," your questions for author christina hoff sommers live for three -- booktv'sing at "in-depth," the first sunday of every month on c-span2. a middle or high school student, c-span posies noting cam competition was what should congress addressed this year. be sure to include c-span programming for your chance to -- to win the grand

prize of $5,000. get more income at student cam.org. >> c-span, we bring evidence from washington directly to you, putting you in the room for congressional hearings, and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of rugged industry. we are c-span -- created by the cable tv industry 34 years ago and flooded by your local cable or satellite provider. now, you can watch us in hd. >> "washington journal" continues. host: our guest joining us now is marc mauer. he is with the sentencing project. a recent op-ed of yours has the headline -- reducing crime by reducing incarceration. what is the connection? puttingasically, we are to the fuel in prison for far too long. i think it is really now pretty much well put that whatever

income incarceration has on crime it is really one of diminishing returns at the scale that we have today, more than 2 million people behind bars, the u.s. has become a world leader in using imprisonment. so if we could reduce the incarceration, people who do not need to be there or who are there for john, we can reinvest with early intervention, prevention, treatment. been any there connection with the length of prison sentences and the reduction of crime in the u.s.? guest: prison population has gone up for four decades now, crime has gone up during some of those periods, got down during some of those periods as well. the best we know is that the reduction crime since the 1990's some say it is as little as 10%, it is not a function putting .ore people in prison

host: walk us through the process about sentences are determined. guest: we have the impression from old tv shows and things like that. the jury trial, evidence being presented in court and things like that. more than 90% of the cases are plea bargains. so the prosecutor really has a videotape with a slamdunk evidence about who committed the crime, so it the question of the prosecution and defense laying off against each other, strength of the evidence, more or less determining the sense that way. host: so what the determination is made of tilt and the sentence is received, what standards go into place as far as determining the length of the sentence? guest: it depends on the state, the judge, the jewish fiction -- the jurisdiction and the like.

mandatory sentences are in place these days, so judges have very little discretion in determining what the sentence will be. crimes, crimes, other often it is a mandatory 5, 10, 20 year sentence with bury little discretion involved. host: our guest is with us for a period of time to talk to us of the thing in the u.s. when it comes to prison and prison populace. he is marc mauer of the sentencing project. you can reach us at these numbers, (202) 585-3880 for democrats, (202) 585-3881 for republicans, (202) 585-3882 for independents. if you want to send us a tweet, you can do so @cspanwj, and if you want to send this e-mail, that is journal@c-span.org. some statistics from the bureau of justice statistics talks a little but about the prison population, currently more than 218,000 prisoners in 2012,

compared to 2011 to 2012, that increase by 1500, and from 2002 until 2012, increase by 54,000. marc mauer, what do we get from those numbers? hast: very little attention been paid to alternatives, particularly with the drug war. happy people are victims of a drug offense, relative handful of those are the so-called kingpins of the drug trade. by far, most of the people are in the lower, middle level ranges of the drug trade. they are the street corner sellers, mules and careers, people like that. the problem there is that those people are easily replaced on the street if they are arrested and sent off to prison, so you a sweep, you pick up kids on a street corner, they may receive a mandatory prison term, they get out of prison, go back to that corner.

most of the time it would take about 20 minutes before they are replaced on a street corner. as long as we have a demand for drugs into that corner, in a neighborhood, there is almost an endless supply of people ready to rise up and meet that demand. is, as we have expanded the number of people in prison, we are having relatively little impact on crime. we are sentencing people to terms of 20, 30, 40 years, well past the point at which their prime rates would be declining. we're spending them on -- enormous rates on people who are declining. host: the justice department back in august make decisions on how they will approach this. what did they decide? guest: attorney general holder said we have too many people in to me prisons for far too long. pretty remarkable statement for the attorney general. now, the attorney general himself cannot do anything about the mandatory penalties that

govern so much of federal sentencing now, but what he did require is that his u.s. attorneys now use their discretion to make reasonable decisions as to how they prosecute cases. so essentially in a lower-level drug cases where there is no direct connection to violence or he isdrug activity, essentially suggesting that the attorneys bring charges, that they will require the judge to impose a mandatory prison term. sorry -- and far too many cases, people get 5, 10, 20 years for cases that you could ask anybody on the street does this person need to be imprisoned for 20 years and they would say no, yet our one-size-fits-all sentencing policy has pushed backers of the attorney general is essentially saying prosecutors have a lot of discretion, they should use that discretion wisely. the former attorney

general had a response to that action by the current one thing that the system simply sweep aside the activity enacted by congress one -- guest: yeah, the not so hidden secret is the -- please officers deciding when to make an arrest or when to give full warning, prosecutors deciding what kind of charges to bring, please negotiations, all through the line and with parole decisions and the like. so the question is -- we can eliminate the discretion, but how can we got it, how can we use it wisely to take advantage of what the law says or requires, but also understand that justice requires doing the right thing essentially and excessive incarceration does not help anybody, particularly, so how do you use that general

guidance? host: marc mauer is our guest. first call, charlie, democrats line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i did experience a state prison, and i found out that my crime nonviolent nor dealt with drugs. the only thing i can say basically as we do need to be careful when we go through the court system and sentencing these so-called criminals. could've been handled by probation or some other. i do understand that the calls prisoners would be much higher than if we put them on a preventative program. i'm very interested in listening to what you have to say on that. host: how long was your sentence? caller: seven months. host: charlie, thank you. guest: without knowing the circumstances of your case, and for to many cases, what we do

places peoplemany are sentenced to prison because there are too few options available. enough drug treatment slots, you have enough mental health cap does, far too many jurisdictions that is just not available. in prisonthe person for some time, we do not have to worry about that decision. of course we should worry about that. as taxpayers. the challenges as we pour more money into the prison system, we have less and less available in the front end, less available in the community, in other parts of the court system that might help people like the caller be able to be supervised in a community rather than inside a prison cell. prisonersmillion currently in state prison populations. that was 2012. they declined by 29,000 from

2011 to 2012. california accounting for 51% of the decrease. with anna had the largest increase with over 1000 more prisoners heard what happened in california that cause that decreased? guest: the california decision intriguing. basically the question was did the overcrowding in california produce unconstitutional conditions of confinement, particularly in access to health care. the court ruled essentially it was far too overcrowded, ordered the state to reduce its population by more than 30,000 people, a fairly substantial number from the height from about 60,000 before that. the state had a very aggressive campaign to do that, essentially trying to keep people convicted of nonviolent property and drug offenders, they might be in local jails come under local probation supervision. reconsidering some of the parole

violators, whether they need to get sent back to prison if they test positive for drug tests or things like that. can you still supervise them in different ways? their undertaking what we might consider a grand experiment. so far, dramatic reduction of prison population. to date, there has been no adverse affect on public safety. it is not as if they are all andng out of prison engaging in massive crimes. in fact, the people coming out of prison only account for a relatively modest proportion of all crime in any given year. so i think we have a lot to learn. we will see more over the next several years about whether substantial reductions like this can be achieved, no adverse effect on public safety. hopefully tax savings for the taxpayers in reducing some of the negative harms of prison. host: michael up next trumpet the many, republican mike, good morning. caller: good morning.

i think crime is a major problem in this country. we all have friends and family who have been victims of crime, murder, etc., and whole neighborhoods are -- you are unable to go into whole neighborhoods because the crime rate is so high. i think if we had less people going to prison, we would have more crime. i think it is a major problem, and i don't think we should be putting less people in prison. in fact, probably more people should go to prison because there are too many criminals on the street now. crime is certainly a serious problem. have beenght, many victimized themselves or friends and loved ones who have been feared for 40 years, we tried the strategy of putting more people in resin and we have seven times as many people behind bars today as we did in the early 1970's. we lead the world in that department. so if that is the best way to deal with crime, we certainly have given that a striker and -- that a try.

most parents recognize that how do you prevent your kids from getting in trouble? well, you provide them with good education, you provide them with a loving family, you give them good opportunities to get summer jobs and things like that. criminal justice is not the primary way most of us try to get our kids to obey the law to do the right thing. so what we think about how do we deal with the problem of crime, there is a whole range of institutions, families, community, society, including the criminal justice system. we have him to rely far too heavily on criminal justice i think over the last four decades. we need to rebalance that so we can intervene earlier on with the 13, 14, 15-year-old who might be getting into trouble. if we can invest and work with those kids, i think we would get a much better pay off then it nearly waiting until they are 25 or 30, putting them in prison for long periods of time. host: athens, georgia, caroline,

and line. caller: thank you, mr. mauer. i wonder if you know about the law that has changed in georgia. at the beginning of this year but the mandatory minimum system -- and sentencing. said if theyner earned their way into prison, they can earn their way out. i had a love one who is in for 10 years, it was her first offense, no one was hurt, she was addicted to heroin. .hat was never addressed her interaction -- her addiction was never addressed. the judge said that she did not daughter thaty much time, but her hands were tied by the law. there was so much pointing to where, you know, things should change just to my daughter's case, but there is a new law that has often the mandatory

minimums. i was wondering if you knew about that. guest: it is similar to what we are starting to see around the country and many other areas as well. two things in particular. one is that as in georgia, far too many people, far too many cases, judges saying -- my hands were tied in this particular .ase 10 years in prison should not have been the penalty yet they have no choice but to do so. we saw a few years ago in new york, the infamous rockefeller drug laws had been on the books for nearly 40 years imposing 15, 20 year citizens, often on people who were very low-level dealers, players and the drug trade. the other part of it is basically when we send people to prison, 95% of them are coming home sunday, so how do we want them coming back? incentives fore them to be engaged in prison education,

vocational training, substance abuse programming, that can reduce the prospect that some of them may come back to prison, may cycle through over and over again. so it should be in everybody's interest to provide the services, provide incentives in terms of their sentence life to get them to engage in that kind of programming. host: on the federal level, who determines sentencing laws? guest: it all comes from congress initially. congress has set up the u.s. sentencing commission, were set up a guy like that went into effect in 1987 that essentially look at the crime and the person's prior record to determine the generals in his that should be imposed, but then on top of that, congress has a mandatory penalties, so whatever discretion judges might have had through the guideline, at least in those ieses where the mandatoro apply, there is absolutely no discretion. i think it is common in those

cases, we are seeing far too much time in prison for not the most serious kind of crimes. host: has there been an effort to give a judge more flexibility even if there are standard laws on the books? guest: there have been a number of challenges to the u.s. supreme court. a case called booker several years ago could basically maybe sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory. it does open up the degree of discretion judges can use in those cases. again, when a mandatory sentences are applied, only congress can change those. air is now some efforts underway to try to rise the legislation pending in the senate as we beak, so the challenge will -- can lawmakers come together to recognize some of the injustices taking place through that? host: how often are laws revisited for consideration as far as revamping them, taking them? guest: there is no obligation to

look at them, they could be on the books for 100 years. it is only a question of when there is sufficient hours, tension, criticism to them that this can take place. what we're seeing now, actually bipartisan efforts in congress, in the senate, we have leading liberal democrats like senator leahy of vermont, senator durbin of illinois, and leading tea party republicans, cerner rand paul of kentucky, senator mike lee of kentucky, coming together to cosponsor bipartisan legislation to scale back the severity of the mandatory sentencing. so it is intriguing that is coming from both sides of the political spectrum, somewhat for different reasons, perhaps. but a growing recognition that this is got to far and needs to uch toohis has gone m far. on ourext caller democrat line. caller: this is really crazy to me that you guys are not talking about racism.

in this criminal justice system. now, i am 50 years old, i remember back in the 1980's when all of this proliferation of th is came into being. drugs going into the black community is -- black communities and whole generations just being victimized -- systemize into the prison system. we created the system. and now you have 2, 3 generations that are not being productive members of society. now, we have got to get these people into society, or we have a lot of baby boomers, me for one, that are going to be retiring, and we have a whole 2, 3 generations that are not going to be productive, are not going to be giving into the social security system. this is not a sustainable system, but we did created. createyou are absolutely your prison system, laws come from congress, we elect the members of congress, in the 1980's, you refer to, that was

really the inception of the war on drugs. it is not the only reason we have a massive resistance am today, but it was a very significant one. certainly back then. among the most notorious laws of the times with the mandatory something laws for crack cocaine passed by congress in 1986, which punished crack cocaine sentenced for more harshly than powder cocaine, and it was subsequently realized 80% of the people convicted of crack cocaine offenses were african- american. these laws were viewed by many people as unjust and unfair and not very good drug policy. it was not until 2010, 24 years later, that congress finally came together to reduce the scale of that disparity. they did not allow maybe disparity, but there was a very significant reduction. i think it illustrates that we can pass tough sentencing laws, it seemed like it took 20 minutes back in 1986, and it takes more than 20 years to

recognize the harm that has been done and change that. should be a lesson to us, i think, and sort of rush to judgment or making policy based on what has often been sensationalized accounts of crimes and problem and what we can do about that. host: according to the sentencing project in 2011, but half of those serving in federal prisons are serving because of drug-related matters. -- would you call for changes not only for sentencing but for possession of wealth? -- as well? guest: mozilla prison were not there for smoking a joint or something. they were involved in the drug trade is some level. roughly half the people convicted in federal court of drug crimes are in the lower .evels the question is -- what are we accomplishing in terms of the drug problem? if one believes that law enforcement should be part of lockinger to that, does

up street corner sellers and people who are getting on a bus with a packet of drugs for the big kingpin that they are delivering, does that really get us very far? i think the answer after 25 years of this is no way does not make for a much difference at all. states likee c colorado and washington changing possession laws for marijuana, and how ultimately it leads to send the thing you got them a note there is this -- to the sentencing. i do not know if there's a connection, but maybe there is. not many people are in prison for small positions, although in local jails you will see quite a few people arrested for those offenses. the question as to what extent will it contribute to opening up the debate about drug policies. will not mean that drugs be legalized tomorrow, but the question is -- how do we determine the degree of harm that is cost to the individual, to the community, and what is the best way to approach it?

preventative treatment, law enforcement and get us where we need to be. the imbalance we've seen far too much in law enforcement, incarceration at the expense of other approaches, that has been a rough problem. host: this is bobby from maryland, republican line. caller: good morning. in my state, there is a methadone lytic on every corner. the governor did away with the death penalty. there is a killing every night in baltimore due to drugs. we just had 27 prison guards prosecuted for taking drugs into the jail. it sounds to me like you are saying we don't want to prosecute them, send them to the methadone clinic, put them in a house, pay for everything. well, one day, somebody is going to stand up and say we have had enough, put them all in jail, put them out of rikers, put them somewhere. very killing each other. and the kids are seeing this,

and they are thinking it is wonderful, we are going to make big bucks. unfortunately, the evidence of the hands about the failures of some of those policies. it was only this year maryland abolished the death penalty. all those years of the 80's -- 1980's and 1990's, where there were very serious problems it with the drug trade that only in maryland but in the country, apparently was not terribly effective if one believes that as a way to solve some of the drug-related violence. what we do know about the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's in 1990's, we had a very deadly mix of young people, easy access to guns, and this new -- turfch created a new battles and a light -- and the like. for a variety of reasons that

diminished. it is still a problem in many neighborhoods, but we should not be making policy that is going to affect us for generations as we did with harsh sentencing long locking people up after they are any kind of threat to the community. and again, without dealing with the problems of substance abuse, without dealing with the easy access to weapons in far too many cases. all those kinds of things have not gotten much attention. host: armando, pennsylvania, democrats line. caller: yes, good morning. the reason why i am speaking is because i have been in the street since the 1950's, and -- and the system is messed up. the system got a be -- do the things the right way. because right now, if you look out at the guys that come out of jail, to find a job, they cannot find a job because when they go

to look for work and may find an application for a job, the first thing they ask you -- do you have a criminal record? if you put on you have a criminal record, they do not hire you. so what happens? when he comes out of jail and look for job, he cannot find a job, so he has to go back to the street and commit a crime. the system has got to change. they have got brand-new log back. -- law back. he served his time, now it is time for them, the state to give that person a job so he could get out of the street. and a person that goes to jail for smoking drugs or using thosee or using heroin, people should be in treatment not in jail because jill is not the solution because right now in jail, the population of jail in the 50 states, you have more drugs in the jail than in the street, and i can prove that and demonstrate that to all these people. host: armando, let our guest

response. guest: you are absolutely right. coming out of prison, the most important thing is to get up -- to get a job and have a place to live. it is very difficult with people with criminal records to get a there are some things we can do in terms of public policy. just last year, the equal opportunity employment commission sent a new guidance out for employers. wereple of problems identified. many employers as on applications getting arrested for crimes even if it did not lead to a conviction. certainly that would be inappropriate to most people. if you are convicted to a crime -- of a crime event to the job, that is one thing. secondly, there is often no indication given of when the conviction took lace.

you can have somebody who had a conviction of stealing a car -- took place. you can have somebody who had a atviction for stealing a car the age of 18. that was 30 years ago and many employers will not higher them as a result. you need to take into account how long it has been and the like. we know from all sorts of research that if the person has 6, 7, eightree years, their chances of being rearrested are not that different from you or -- from yours or mine. host: european inmates do not face the punitive consequences due,american ex-person is prisoners do.- ex-

guest van -- there are restrictions on the right to vote. you think about people coming out of prison. they need to rejoin the community and be treated as first class citizens again. when we erect barriers, it maketh -- makes it difficult and that does not help anybody. it puts them at a high risk level of getting involved with crime. host: on twitter, are there to reducegrams involvement in crime? guest: they can take college courses. there is mental health

counseling. some of that takes place. in some states there are incentive programs to an -- to participate in drug treatment. if you complete it successfully, you may get your sentence reduced six or 12 months. that should be a win-win situation. we need to be experimenting with more of those kinds of incentives. brooklyn, newom york. good morning. caller: good morning. in my opinion, we have 2 governments in this country. one that sells drugs and one that does not. i am finally getting my day in court 40 years later. states should stop making drugs legal and the federal government telling us it is illegal. it is either legal or illegal.

have it where the state says yes and the federal government says no. on tv, they show you that neighbors are getting arrested for growing marijuana. the reason the next-door neighbor doesn't get raided his because he works for the government. seen legal issues and practical issues coming out of the marijuana issue in washington and colorado. you are right. we have federal laws and state laws. the citizens of those 2 states said that marijuana is action is not going to be consider a crime anymore. government ineral a tricky position. it seems like they are taking a hands off policy. that is what the citizens of those states want to do. the federal government is saying

we have better things to do with our resources. there is room for growth. there are changes at the state level that can influence the national climate and congress and how they approach these issues. we are seeing is beyond personal marijuana session, but some of the sentencing reforms taking marijuanaersonal possession, but in some of the sentencing reforms taking place. -- what shoulds incarceration look like. we need to take a look at that. crimes are serious. we all take it seriously. what should the scale of punishment be? at all levelsle of crime, including violent

crimes, far more harshly than other democratic nations do. one in every nine people in prison is serving a life sentence with no opportunity for parole. we are taking the 18-year-old that was hanging around with the wrong kind of people and they go out in a car and they rob a gas station. now they are all charged with armed robbery. 20 years later, we see that person in prison. he has become an adult. he is not necessarily the same person he was and he was 18. the question is, how much punishment is enough? should there be a second chance in life? it does not mean we do not take the crimes seriously. years accomplish that 10 or 20 years does not accomplish?

host: crystal from tennessee. you are on. i was not arrested. i was let go. two years later, they came and get me -- and got me and took me to jail. i was in there for five days. it was all a misunderstanding. i felt that i was punished because of this. you have so much criminal activity going on in the prison system that these people are teaching each other these kinds of things that they can do when they go out. you have the stigmatism of people when they do get out of prison and you cannot get a job. sheriff's down here

who are absolutely criminals. i could have sued the county that did arrest me. himself lost his job because of criminal activity. your: i cannot speak to particular situation, but there is far too much day to day missed behavior. we have government documentation of the rate of sexual assaults in prison and the like. there are many reasons this has developed this way. resumesush to build over the last 40 years, many were happy todies provide the funding to build prisons. they were not generous about providing programs that take place in those prisons. you end up with warehouses being set up around the country. that is not a recipe for success for anyone.

it is not good for the guards or for the administration. they have people packed in with very little going on. host: from pennsylvania on the democrats' line. caller: i would like to address the issue of poverty in this country. that is the problem and why we have so much crime. we have so much inequality, so much corruption. i travel is -- travel extensively. i have been places like iceland where you can leave a baby carriage and go shop in the mall and no one steals your child. i believe what this man was talking about. our priorities are totally wrong in this country. need to get god, family, caring for our fellow man.

we have nothing but greed and no one cares whether anyone else is educated. to jail or go whether you do not go to jail is all because of how good your lawyer is, how much money you make. if you have enough money, you can commit any crime in this country. guest: you cannot commit any crime. we do see people convicted. you are correct. the level of justice one receives is related to the quality of the defense and what you have available to you. far too many jurisdictions, particularly rural ones, the ofyer comes in the day having his client have to make a plea in court and the lawyer does not know whose client is sitting in the courtroom. the level of support for things like indigent defense where

people cannot afford their own attorney is awful in many cases. the broader questions raised about social inequality have to do with the ability of people to get the job come to support themselves. none of that suggests that poor people are going to automatically go out and commit crimes. if we are concerned about public safety, we have to recognize the risk level of people who do not have good jobs and do not have the support system. somethingt to do about crime, you have to look at those issues. host: the five states with the highest incarceration rates. the wheezy anna, mississippi, louisiana,lahoma -- oklahoma.i, alabama, why is louisiana at the top of that list? guest: they lock up people who would not be locked up in other cases.

several thousand people serving life without parole. graveyard in the prison because so many people die at the prison. they have a whole system whereby local sheriffs make money by renting out their jail sales -- from otherople prisons. no one has taken a look and said, what should we do with our prison system? they made a decision by instinct over many years. it is over control -- out of control right now. have does governor jindal control in louisiana? to review thed actions of the police. there is discussion going on right now about how they can reduce that high level of incarceration and save some

money and reduce imprisonment and do the right thing in terms of public safety. lowest, in case you are interested. tops the list followed by minnesota and rhode island. caller: i do not see how we can use crack or cocaine as a typical crime. that takes lives. whether you have a gun in your socket or not, there are od' and there are things that go along with it. that is not my question that was a -- that is not my question. that was a comment. here is my question. the police tells you that is criminal. if you do this, you will be punished. what is wrong with actually punishing them? i live in nashville in the inner-city. on my way to work, there are

ride 4 corners that i will every morning because it saves me 10 minutes because of traffic . on those four corners, you they arepeople who, if not working, they are there for their own reasons. i have seen police sent a few yards away from them. do what theyg to want to do regardless. i do not think the punishment is strong enough. >> thank you. -- host: thank you. guest: our prison population is at world record levels. it is not as if we have not paid attention to that part of the way senator dole. punishment has been very -- it is not as if we have not paid attention to that part of the equation.

is, we need to figure out why those people are hanging around the street corners not looking to work and not being able to work. is it a lack of opportunity? is it a lack of education? value for thef value of work and the like? how do we get some of those people off of corners and not into prison cells and into something reductive? chance thats the you would see major changes in the way prison sentences are done at the federal level? guest: legislation has been through the senate. there is a bipartisan movement in the house. days, bipartisanship is not a popular word.

the criminal justice policy should be one of the few areas where there should be some possibility. that was not the case 10 or 20 years ago. they are recognizing that problems have been created. difficult to predict what may happen on the hill. we areree by which seeing people at both ends of the political spectrum come together suggests that we could see some substantial changes in the coming year. has president obama at dressed to the issue directly? guest: not directly. cocaineencing for crack has been injured -- has been addressed to radically. host: the sentencing project website is on your screen.

marc mauer, thank you. not many people think of the lincolnt -- think of for -- we will talk about lincoln when we come back. >> every weekend since 1998, booktv has taught -- brought you the top fiction authors. >> women are tied to their work in a way that we may not like. when i look at someone like the

woman who was chosen to be the ceo of yahoo! when she was visibly pregnant and was asked how much maternity leave she wanted to take, she said none. existct that such women -- it is not the way i would do it. i took lindsay of maternity leave. is the kind of woman that there can be space for. there are some stay-at-home guys who can be happy stay-at-home guys who do not live entirely in portland, oregon. >> the only national television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. it was shocking. i saw it, that look he had on his face. i could close my eyes and i could see him on the stretcher. i could see him putting his hand

up. i could close my eyes and i could see it. i will never forget that first case, that's bringing me to reality of what was going on here -- that bringing me to reality of what was going on here. after he got into the tent, there was that initial triage. the team starts to work. in, myself and my colleague who wrote the forward. we both got pulled in because the other team wanted us to begin right away. they did not want us to be bystanders. they said, you guys have to get involved right away. once they did that and they pulled us in, it was like, wake up. now you have to act. you have to be a doctor. you have to be a surgeon. you have to be a care provider. you have to dismiss your

,motions and talk that away what you are feeling, and just work. you have one of justice. you have to say this guy's life. -- you have one of jet if -- objective. his own experience as a physician working with soldiers in afghanistan. >> "washington journal" continues. host: our guest is kevin peraino . he is the author of "lincoln in the world." guest: we think of lincoln as a because theredent was a war raging on american soil. in ken had to deal with a series of crises. to deal with a

series of crises. he was a foreign policy president, in my opinion. one of the reasons there has not been a book about this, a holistic human account of foreign policyin is because he had a strong, competent secretary of state. when you put him in the middle of his own foreign policy, you come up with a hagiography. i wanted to look at the things lincoln did do in foreign affairs. seward'sk about influence. potentiallyln was provincial. he grew up in kentucky and illinois. he had never been overseas. he spoke no foreign languages except a little german that he used to woo voters in illinois.

had traveled overseas a couple of times. lincoln looked to him for his expertise in foreign affairs. was also an incredibly vain and pompous person. he had an incredibly high estimation of himself. lincoln had to dial him back a little bit when he thought he was wrong. how england,out france, and spain were viewed. guest: the biggest thing was the crisis he had to defuse. they did not want to see the united states go to pieces. some of the statesmen in britain and france -- there was a gleeful this -- gleefulness

about watching the united states go to pieces. they liked seeing what was going on there. did also.ii it was not in the european power 's interest in seeing the united states fall apart. there were commercial and potential ties between britain and the united states. the united states' largest creditor at the time. there were good reasons for avoiding war. britain was france's historical enemy after the napoleonic wars. the french did not want to see the united states go to pieces. a strong united states could be a counterweight to britain. wanted to keep from doing something that would lead to war when the interests of the

powers were not necessarily productive. host: how did he achieve that? incrediblyoln was an patient person. cabinet secretary said patients was an incredibly in port part of his -- said patienc e was an incredibly important part of his character. that is really important in foreign affairs. theoitable changes in international power grid do not happen every day. thingsre the kinds of that change glacially. knowing what you can change in international affairs and what you cannot change is an important skill. lincoln was good at that. host: did that cause tension between him and his secretary of state? cases, seward was

no one saying patience. the emancipation proclamation would win hearts and minds in europe. by the summer of 1862, he was eager to and -- to issue some kind of proclamation. said, now is not the right time. battles onwin some the battlefield. sometimes lincoln was right. was right.eward together, they made really good foreign policy. host: our guest is kevin peraino , the author of "lincoln in the world."

you can ask them questions on one of our three lines. 202-585-3880 four democrats. , for republicans. for 202-585-3882 independents. what do you do when you are not writing books? -- writeworry articles. i was working as a foreign correspondent in the middle east. i was reporting from places like yemen, libya, syria. i went through this time when i wanted to step back and take a look at the broader framework of american foreign policy, traditions of american foreign policy. i was so used to covering it from the street level. this time sucked me in. the characters are amazing. it is something out of a novel.

you have clay, lincoln's minister in russia. he walks around with knives dangling from his waistband and picking fights. johnave the grandson of adams, who is in london, a pretty competent diplomat. you have lincoln's minister in paris, who ended up dying in what the lincoln biographer referred to as the apartment of a woman not his wife. his body had to be smuggled back . this is an incredible cast of characters. and you have lincoln at the center of it all, a figure of enduring interest. close bank -- grew in the position as far as foreign policy was concerned. guest: his first term in congress a one-sided with almost the end of the mexican war, america's first full-scale

conflict on foreign sale -- soil. lincoln's first public act was to oppose the mexican war. he stood up and gave this speech in congress challenging president polk. this was his foreign affairs awakening. tois a pretty good prelude his civil war diplomacy later on. call here is our first from michigan on our republican line. caller: good morning. about a month ago on c-span on the history channel, you had a man who talked about how russia helped president lincoln. they sent [indiscernible] fleet to the other new england area.

in the event that some other country would participate in a war against the united states, he gave permission to the fleets to assist president lincoln. also, lincoln had many contacts with the russian court. clay --ioned cash is you mentioned clay, was he the one in st. petersburg? quite a lot of participation with russia. the name was webster tarpley. guest: it is a great question. i heard about the west are tarpley segment. tarpley segment. webster was a -- rot -- russia

was a rising power. they had the largest standing army. i think it was 900,000 soldiers. they were increasingly a player. in the fall of 1863, russian ships showed up off the atlantic coast and the pacific coast. they were there for some time. a little toast was giving to the czar. the russians were friendly to the union. russiansays, the showing up was a godsend for lincoln. he was dealing with some serious problems. mexico andinvaded conquered mexico city in 1863. one of lincoln's biggest foreign

policy challenges was to decide how to deal with france. of 1863, here come the russians. the union had friends in the international arena. it ended up eating something that was important. host: on the independent line, this is tyler. about whatm curious his opinions would be on american superpower status and also the massive role the federal government now plays in state affairs. guest: it is a great question. it is impossible to answer, obviously. lincoln scholars have been debating this for decades, what lincoln would inc. of the u.s.

government today. think ofincoln would the u.s. government today. that lincolnote would have been saved from having to deal with the gilded age. his economic values would have destroyed his moral values. workpeople say the 2 compatible. other people say they were not. that is one of the essential tensions you look at when you look at lincoln. bookan epilogue in this that i call lincoln versus lincoln where we look at lincoln's moral view of america's place in the world. we know the lines about the last best hope that lincoln talks about. but how that moral view of

america's place in the world would have been recognized -- reconciled with economic expansion that we saw in the gilded age. host: from new jersey on the republican line. caller: i wanted to follow-up on the comment on lincoln's foreign policy reasons of issuing the emancipation proclamation. that is a first i have ever heard of that. most people say it was his view to keep the union together at whatever cost. to what degree does the author had --he reason lincoln to what degree does the author think the reason was foreign- policy or to keep the union together? guest: there was a complicated

cocktail of reasons. domestic policy was one, to create ideological consistency to help when the war at home. -- win the war at home. he said this a couple of times leading up to the emancipation. he said it explicitly. at it into look context. he was getting letters from his diplomats in europe who were saying, if you would only shift the war aim. there is so much anti-slavery sentiment in europe if you shift the war aims to anti-slavery. lincoln knew and was being told over and over again. lincoln was reluctant to do it he cuts he did not want to alienate the border states. if he made the emancipation proclamation right away, it would alienate the border states. he was getting input from europe. one other interesting thing

about that. there was a series of points on the road to emancipation where military commanders, general fremont in the west, diderot hunter, and others -- general hunter and others, issued military proclamations. lincoln overruled them because he thought these were in support and danes. lincoln thought that if you did a piecemeal approach to -- he thought these were insubordination. columbia, missouri . turner, good morning. -- go ahead. i appreciate how you open the phone lines to other

folks. i called because i strongly object that lincoln did not care about the future of the slaves. i guess we live in a time where it is popular to denigrate our past or find rings wrong with our past leaders or establishments. things wrong with our past leaders or establishments. the southern states had no question that this was about slavery. almost all of them withdrew from and completed that act before he was even inaugurated. things that he went through, some of the things he experienced growing up, it becomes less hard to imagine a human being having that kind of compassion. one of the things he did to win the election -- can you imagine a president winning an election

today where that many states in a nation that small were withdrawing? that could not occur. up some german newspapers. these were more like newsletters. he bought these german circulars and using those, he could get around the traditional press. germans were not big on plantations. host: we have to leave in there and let our guests respond. by germancoln did language newspapers. he saw them as important. lincoln thought newspapers in general were important. this is something i try to bring out in the book. age of lived in an globalization a lot like our own. distances were shrinking.

the years before the civil war saw the advent of the telegraph. there is a huge explosion in newspaper publication. of ways, this resembles our globalizing world. there were upsides and downsides. theoln could speak across atlantic to ordinary europeans. on the other hand, it was an age where nothing was arrived at anymore. lincoln had to deal with diplomatic leaks like the current administration. es was,my favorite quot "diplomacy has sold few secrets these days." equivalent his own of a twitter mole. he was working in the state department at the time. he published his diary right in

the middle of the war. he called lincoln pigheaded lincoln and his job was to keep seward from making a fool of himself. link and had to deal with these upsides and downsides in the information age. host: from twitter, how many an ongoing serious relationship with the u.s. north during the war? what were the major negotiations? guest: one of my favorite letters during the civil war is the king of siam rights lincoln a letter and offers to send him elephants. lincoln has this great response. in this country, elephants are not so big. we use carriages. --re was a lot of diplomatic

there were a lot of diplomatic powers. there was a lot going on at home and lincoln could focus on every one of them. -- of the things lincoln what lincoln really focus on was france, england, spain. host: a call on our democratic line. i was wondering about your opinion of lincoln's maturation as far as dealing his minister to great britain. it is my understanding that he did not have a whole lot of respect for him initially. he came to rely on him and depend on him after that trent and the question of recognition of the confederacy.

guest: it is a good question. seward francis adams was ward's guy.e long line ofa diplomats and was kind of a snob . he looked at it as european statesmen did. they looked down on lincoln and did not respect that this guy has not traveled abroad. not pay him much heat. was,f the things lincoln he was not cosmopolitan, but he was diplomatic. he was diplomatic in his bones. it came naturally to him. the british journalist at the time said a lot of diplomats would shrug their shoulders to get out of a difficult position.

lincoln would tell a story or a joke and cracked everyone up. his laugh was inscribed as the the nay of a wild horse. mitch on the republican line. caller: how were diplomats appointed back in those days? were they political appointees? guest: a lot of patronage. the diplomatic corps at that time was not professional. a rows francis adams was and some others were pros -- was and some others were pros . any kind of inconvenient radical abolitionists was sent abroad

during that time. it is also considered a place for extended vacations. there is a great thing in the book where herman melville, the author of moby dick, comes to the white house. you do not get the sense that he wants to hone his diplomatic skills. he wants a vacation. he wants to have a good time in italy. there is a great scene where a group of men show up at the white house to try to get their diplomat ind as a the sandwich islands, modern-day hawaii. they say, our guy is really sick. the change of climate would do him good. lincoln has this redline. he says, i have 8 -- lincoln has this great line. he says, i have eight other applicants who are all sicker then your guy. host: we are talking about president lincoln's foreign

policy approach. on're on with kevin peraino the independent line. go ahead. let's move on to william. from rhode island on the democrats' line. i came in late. i was wondering if you covered the exchange between karl marx and abraham lincoln. a congratulatory message when lincoln was elected. lincoln responded, they did that to the ambassador. commented on free labor. guest: i devoted an entire chapter to it. it is one of my favorites. did not knowarx

each other personally. i do not think they had a lot of influence on each other. they traded letters indirectly. congratulated lincoln at one point on his reelection. and ken wrote a letter to the workers of britain. wrote a- and lincoln letter to the workers of britain . what i wanted to do is look at them side-by-side. it is easy to forget that they lived at the same time. the 1850sriting in and writing for newspapers. he was writing for the new york tribune, which had a huge circulation in the united states, about 200,000 at the time. we do not know if lincoln read marx's articles. lincoln read the tribune pretty religiously. what was interesting to me about this chapter and marx in particular is that the rules of

foreign affairs were changing. ordinary people, because of this time of globalization, were having a greater and greater role in international relations. tox and lincoln were trying find ways to take advantage of what we would call soft power. it was not a term that was in use then. they are wrestling with this new world. we talked about some of the ways did,incoln -- ways lincoln speaking to ordinary workers to put pressure on european statesmen. marx tried to rally workers during this time. works wanted the union to win the war for different reasons than lincoln. he thought if the union could triumph over the aristocratic south, it was one more step toward the workers triumphing over both. he had different reasons. he wanted the union to win just

as lincoln did. host: matt from nebraska on our republican line. caller: the book is absolutely fascinating. what countries during the civil war provided monetary support for the lincoln administration and what opened the doors after the north won? thank you very much for c-span. it was one of the things that was important, particularly to the treasury secretary at the time. they tried hard. both the union and the confederacy tried hard to secure loans from the european powers. what is more interesting than is the wayestion lincoln was able to ask boeing

the economic resources of the united states. theas able to exploit economic resources of the united states. the issuance of greenbacks for the first time, a national paper currency, helped unite the united states in a monetary union. the first national income taxed at leis during this time -- income tax took place during this time. host: carol from maine, democrats' line. caller: good morning. you mentioned that the diplomatic corps was a way to get rid of annoying people. my question is, what were the circumstances that caused president lincoln to appoint clay?

guest: he was an abolitionist, a troublemaker, and a firebrand. that was part of it. he was also a childhood friend of mary lincoln. they grew up in lexington. i do not inc. that was necessarily a factor in this particular instance. that wasot think necessarily a factor in this particular instance. she was more cosmopolitan than lincoln in a lot of ways. she went to a school where the students spoke french when she was growing up. she was pretty cosmopolitan. she and her family, the todds over lincoln. lincoln used to say, one d was good enough for god, but not the todds.

mary tried to get her candidate appointed in the sandwich items -- sandwich islands, modern-day hawaii. i am forgetting whether it is in the letters or diaries of clay where he is recalling a conversation he had with mary. he hated seward. mary said, don't worry about seward. no one pays any attention to what he says. can you imagine? was it the resulting unified and more powerful federal government that secured war?.s.' in the civil

absolutely the increasing ties that centralized was important. the crucible of the war bringing the nation together was something that was really important and had a lasting effect. you put lincoln versus napoleon. guest: this is not napoleon bonaparte. emperor ofoleon iii, france, a nephew of bonaparte. late 1861, he, along with british and french troops, invaded mexico to try to recover some debts. frenchtish left, but the stained and conquered mexico city in 1963. yedy installed -- french sta

and conquered mexico city in 1863. lincoln had to deal with this in norman's challenge to the munro --cument -- this is nor ms. t the enormous challenge to munro doctrine -- monroe doctrine. was a serious proposal. lincoln resisted. seward resisted it. they were in lockstep on this issue. they decided it would be better to let napoleon undo himself. it was a foolish move or napoleon to extend himself this way. napoleon had a lot of problems closer to home in europe. lincoln took no action. after lincoln's death, a puppet

napoleon installed was executed and napoleon had to withdraw his troops. host: a call on our independent line for kevin peraino. question fore a you. i frequently note that when people are addressing lincoln, forget to ignore or [indiscernible] and the effect they had. i wonder why. host: one more time again? guest: the moral terrorist. europeans hated it. britain said, we dislike the moral terrorist. we want cotton. the cotton thing was a bigger

issue. at the beginning of the war, lincoln issued a blockade on the atlantic coast. less and less cotton was making its way to europe. toanything, it was going spur intervention on the part of the british. cotton mills in liverpool and manchester and the british manufacturing heartland was not getting the raw materials they needed from the southern states. thousands of british workers were thrown out of work. there was a risk that the european powers would intervene to open up the cotton trade. that was an economic factor that was important. hoax had notf written about the foreign policy aspect. where did you get that source folksial from -- a lot of folk

had not written about the foreign-policy aspect. guest: i started this when i was overseas. i was based in the middle east should i started the background reading in some of the libraries there. i will tell you something i find really interesting about this. there are 15,000 books about lincoln. my friends say how can you possibly turn up anything new? donelincoln scholars have in recent years -- and i think this is amazing. i do not think scholars do this for other presidents. some of the past biographers of lincoln have themselves have have themselves become historic figures. scholarsnt lincoln

have done, they have gone back through these papers looking for things that ended up on the cutting room floor. the greatest is michael burling game. ame.urling the papers ofh past historians and biographers and looks for newspaper clippings. you have to fact check them. that was a useful technique. i could go to some of these papers and look through the lens of foreign-policy that other people did not care about. there are some papers in the library of commerce. mary lincoln biographers. you can find a lot of newspaper clippings about the role she played in international affairs, trying to get her diplomats appointed and this sort of thing. it was a useful technique for a book like this.

host: joseph from kentucky. go ahead. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. right after the civil war, there was a confederate general, the only one who had a statute made after him in washington, by the name of albert pike. him tor was sent by europe. that letter was found on a dead courier and it read about the protocol of the elders of zion and they're wanting to take over the world. if you look at that letter, everything in that letter has come to pass. guest: absurd. an absurd question. when did lincoln travel abroad?

guest: he never traveled overseas. he went to the canadian side of niagara falls. he had no friends in europe and he had never been abroad. life, ite end of his was something he was talking about with mary. he wanted to visit the middle east and europe. he admired byron and burns and wanted to see their birth laces in europe. it was something he wanted to do and he never got the chance to do. host: kevin peraino, the author of "lincoln in the world." coming up on the program gordon., commander jd we will talk about sequestration in the armed forces. , we willin the program have a discussion about voting laws in the united states. we will have that and we will

take a look at the papers and take your phone calls. comes your journal" way at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> good evening. i am speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history. the cabinet is convening and the leaders are meeting with the president. the state department and navy officials are meeting with the president all afternoon. in fact, the japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the time that japan was bombing our citizens in the philippines

and sinking one of our transports. by tomorrow morning, the members of congress will have a report and be ready for action. ♪ ♪ >> you've been listening to some of eleanor roosevelt's address hours after the attack at pearl harbor. she gave that address before her husband even spoke to the nation. for the next two hours, we are going to get to know this transformational first lady. she's consistently ranked first in historians polls on first ladies. we will look at her life, her relationships and the time in the white house from 1933 to 1945. well good evening and welcome to "first ladies: influence and image" series.